The Sword of the Spirits

  There was another body near. A bullet had caught him high up on the forehead, making a single blackened hole through which his life had ebbed. It was Wilson, my father’s oldest companion, who had refused a Captaincy from him but taken it from me; not because he wanted the honor but to protect me better. Wilson, the one Captain who had voted against the rest when they condemned me to exile.

  I looked and turned away. I would have howled like a dog but the ice was back in my throat. I stumbled through the rain to where Cymru and the surgeon waited.

  • • •

  Greene and Ripon were two of the three who came to parley: the third was Edmund.

  I received them sitting beside Cymru, with Snake in attendance also. I offered them cakes and ale.

  “It is a good brew,” I said. “It was made on my father’s farm, not half a mile from here. But I can give you ale from your own farms if you would prefer it.”

  “We want no ale,” Greene said. “We seek to know your terms.”

  “That is easily done. I want nothing but my own: my city and the bride who was given to me by this her father.”

  “A city is not something that can be given,” Greene said, “except by the will of its citizens. This is well known in civilized lands. Your father first seduced us from that course by taking Petersfield, and under your rule we strayed still further into error. We are paying for it now and know we must pay heavily. But we will not yield our freedom.”

  Cymru said: “And my daughter? Will you yield her, to her father?”

  It was Edmund who answered. “A free lady may not be given up, any more than a city may. If she wishes to come to you, she will. No one will force her.”

  Cymru stared at him with black anger. “Your comrade talks of seducing, but what of you? You, who ate my bread, seduced my daughter from your Prince and friend. And do you chatter now of freedom?”

  Greene said: “This gets us nowhere. We acknowledge defeat. We will say nothing of the way the victory was won. We will pay you gold—all the gold we have in the city. Our wives will strip the rings from their fingers to give you. Take your ransom, and let us live in peace.”

  I shook my head. “We want no gold. No more than the gates of the city. One gate will do. And the Lady Blodwen restored to her father.”

  “To her father,” Edmund said, “or to a man she hates?”

  It told me only what I knew already but the shaft went home. The wound in my shoulder was nothing to it.

  Greene said: “You will get neither. And our walls are high. Prince Stephen, Edmund’s father, saw to that.”

  “In the end you will yield,” I said. “It does not matter to us whether it is soon or late. The suffering is on your side.”

  “You will starve us, then?” Greene said. “We have wheat and cattle. When they have gone we will kill our horses and eat them. And after that we will hunt out rats for our suppers. And after that if we must starve then starve we will. But while there is any strength in our arms you will not come into the city.”

  “Brave words,” I said. “But the promise is easier made than kept.”

  They were ready to go. Cymru said to Edmund:

  “A message for my daughter.”

  “What is it, sire?”

  “Send her her father’s curse.”

  Edmund bowed. “She is too gentle to return it to you. But I do it for her.”

  They sent the Wilsh soldiers who had been Blodwen’s bodyguard out to us. We kept the siege all summer. Kluellan, guided by Snake, proved an excellent quartermaster. We fed off the city farms first; then sent our troops to forage far afield. It was still no easy life, especially compared with the luxury of Klan Gothlen, and I was surprised by how well Cymru and the Wilsh nobles endured it. I had thought there might be mutterings, talk of abandoning it all, but there was none.

  Much hung on Cymru himself of course, and his purpose did not waver. When I spoke of it once, he said:

  “We have come a long way, Luke. Too far to abandon a purpose so nearly won.”

  If the paralysis had not gripped my throat when the command to fire was needed, or if I had pursued them as they fled toward the East Gate, our victory would have been sealed already. We both knew that but he had never charged me with it. I said:

  “They are a stubborn people, sire.”

  Cymru laughed. “We Wilsh can be stubborn, too! And this hard life does us good. We have had too soft a time of it in the past.”

  But all the same I brooded unhappily on the future. We could not keep the army in the field in winter. It was true we had a base in Salisbury on which we could fall back; but that would be a retreat and the thought sickened me. Nor was I confident, however high their morale stayed at present, that the Wilsh would cheerfully endure a winter in a foreign city, with the prospect of resuming the siege of another foreign city in the spring. A soldier must leave home and family when his monarch requires it; but it does not mean that he forgets them. And his longing for them does not weaken with absence but grows stronger.

  Then one day in late summer a man in black robes, on a white horse, rode into the camp. It was Murphy, the High Seer.

  • • •

  He greeted me, and said: “You look well, Luke. Older and tougher, but well. And this is the army which you abandoned us to find. We have heard great things of it. I once doubted that you would take a Wilsh army against your own city and with such weapons as we gave you. I am glad to find I was wrong.”

  I shrugged. “We have come so far, but here we stay. You can kill men in the field with Sten guns, but they do little harm to the stone walls of a city.”

  “You should have asked us for another weapon, then.”

  I looked at him sharply. “Is there such? Big guns, you mean? But can they be made with the materials we have?”

  “No,” Murphy said, “or at least not easily. But there is a thing called a mortar. It was devised for use against forts, as a siege weapon. It throws bombs at a high angle to explode against the walls.”

  I said doubtfully: “The walls of Winchester are not only high but strongly made.”

  “Have you seen a thrush with a snail?” Murphy asked. “It will pick the shell up and throw it against the stone. The shell does not break at that first impact. But the bird picks it up and throws it again. It will throw it a score of times, fifty if necessary. In the end the shell is weakened. It breaks and the thrush gets its reward. We have many more than fifty bombs for you. I promise you: the walls of the city will crack like the snail’s shell.”

  I said: “Where is this mortar, Murphy?”

  He smiled. “You will not have long to wait. It will be here tomorrow. I rode ahead to tell you of it.”

  “Get me this city,” I said, “and you will have your Science back. I promise that.”

  “Within two days it will be yours.”

  • • •

  The mortar came at noon the next day, on a cart drawn by two horses. It was not at all like the cannons which the Prince of Petersfield had used against my father’s army. They had been long and slender of muzzle. The mortar was a squat affair, wide-mouthed, almost as broad across as it was long. It looked a poor instrument to break down the walls which Stephen had spent five years building up.

  And the first bomb it cast fell short, dropping in marshy ground beneath the city’s wall, throwing up mud and water but doing no harm except to the frogs that dwelt there. Robb and Gunter had brought it, and they and Murphy consulted together and shifted the angle of the muzzle. The second bomb burst halfway up the wall, and the Wilsh who were watching raised a cheer at the sight. It died as the smoke cleared away, showing the wall undamaged.

  The High Seers adjusted the muzzle again. The third bomb struck high up, just under the parapet. Robb said with satisfaction:

  “I think we have it.”

  Murphy had brought field glasses with him. These had lenses like spectacles but the lenses were doubled and much stronger. They made small distant objects seem large and clo
se. I was using them, and I said:

  “There is no damage there.”

  “Not yet,” Murphy said. “It is a lucky thrush that gets its snail at the first blow. But we have the range and it is only a question of time.”

  The mortar boomed again, and went on booming. After about an hour the glasses showed cracks and pittings in the wall. After two hours the parapet above that point collapsed, and the Wilsh cheered again.

  The afternoon had turned warm, and the mortar itself gave off heat. Murphy wiped sweat from his brow.

  “You were right. The walls are strong. But we have made a breach. Now it is only a question of hammering away at it.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  “Not today. But by noon tomorrow there will be a hole you can take your army through.”

  “I can wait for that,” I said.

  The angle of the muzzle had to be adjusted as the breach in the wall widened and deepened. The bombardment went on until the light failed with dusk. The top half of the wall had collapsed by then, but the lower half still held.

  • • •

  In the morning Hans came to my tent as usual to wake me, but I was awake already. He stood in the opening, silhouetted against the faint light of dawn. I said:

  “This is a good day, Hans. Today we shall see our homes again.”

  “Yes, sire,” he said. “Sire, there is someone who would see you; from the city.”

  “Another deputation?” I stood up, yawning. “They are early risers. But they will get no better terms for that.”

  “One man only. He who was an Acolyte.”

  “Who was . . . ?”

  I left the tent. Martin stood there, waiting. He had grown his hair and he wore ordinary clothes instead of the Acolyte’s black robe. Apart from that he seemed little different. He was thin, but he had never had much flesh on his bones.

  I clasped his hand and said:

  “Martin! I am glad to see you. How did you get here?”

  “Through the Christians’ tunnel under the walls.”

  That was the tunnel my brother Peter had used to take the city back from the Romsey army. I had not attempted to use it because it was known now, and they could pick my men off one by one as they came out. But I had not blocked it either.

  I said: “You have been in the city? I thought you went to the High Seers in the Sanctuary under the rains of London?”

  “I went there, but did not stay.”

  “Could they not give you what you were seeking, either?”

  “No.” He smiled. “I went a long journey and found what I sought in the place from which I started. But maybe the journey was necessary for all that.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Truth. The truth that is my truth. I am a Christian, Luke.”

  I stared and laughed. “You jest! The truth you looked for was the truth of Science. Do you remember the old book you showed me, under the Ruins, with pictures of machines, and how bitterly you spoke against superstition and lies? Do you remember how you pleaded with me to flee the city with Ezzard, so that the mission of the High Seers could be preserved and Science at last brought back? Will you tell me now that you believe in this tale of a god born in a stable, out of the body of a maiden, who walked the earth performing wonders such as the Seers work in the Seance Hall, who died on a cross but three days later walked again, and who at last rose into the sky to sit among the stars and judge all men? Will you tell me this?”

  “All that and more. Because Science gave no meaning to my life, but this does. But I did not come here to talk of Christian beliefs, Luke. I come to plead for the city which bore us both.”

  “Do you? Who sent you—Edmund, who stole my lady from me, and then the city itself?”

  I spoke bitterly. Martin shook his head.

  “I have not seen them, except at a distance. Would a noble send a Christian to plead on his behalf? I can tell you they are thin from hunger. There is no one in the city who is not. There has been great suffering, Luke.”

  “If there has been suffering it was freely chosen. It does not take much to open a gate.”

  “If tyranny is waiting to come in, it does.”

  “Do you call me tyrant?”

  “Whoever takes what a man will not freely give is that. A tyrant or a thief.”

  “You use harsh words, old friend,” I said. “This thief, this tyrant, once saved you when you hung in chains, awaiting death by fire.”

  “Yes. For that, you may demand anything of me. But not of the city.”

  There was a sharpness in the air, almost of frost. Summer was giving way to autumn. Winter would follow soon.

  I said: “The suffering is almost at an end. I do not need a gate to be opened now. Before the day is over my soldiers will walk through the shattered wall into the streets of Winchester. Or will your stable-god who worked such miracles work one here?”

  “It may be. Through the weak bodies of his servants.”

  I laughed. “The Christians will build the wall again? I do not think they can build as fast as my mortar breaks it down.”

  Martin took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes. I saw that his hand trembled.

  “You are not a cruel man, Luke,” he said. “Only blind. If you could see them starving, all those you knew—men and women, dwarf and human and polymuf—you would have pity. No, do not say it. They have only to open a gate. They can get bread in exchange for freedom. And meanwhile they are behind walls and you do not see them. But we will make you see.”

  “You waste your time,” I said. “It is almost over. And I have won.”

  “Not yet.” He pushed the spectacles back onto his nose. “I said the truth I have found gives a meaning to life. To death, also. I will leave you now. When I return to the city I will stand in the breach of the wall. I fear the thought as much as any man would, maybe more than most, but I think God will give me strength. Your bombs will shatter flesh and bone as well as stone.” He smiled. “You have reminded me that I owe you a death. I am glad to repay it in this fashion.”

  “You speak bravely,” I said, “and I believe that you would do it, with or without the help of your god. But I win here also. I have guards within call. You will not go back to the city until I am master of it.”

  “Imprison me if you wish,” Martin said. “It makes no difference. I was sent here because I was your friend. There are others who will do this task, many others. The High Seers have brought you field glasses, I see, as well as a mortar. Use them to look at the wall.”

  The light was feeble still. With the naked eye one saw only the wall’s gray shape, with the ragged V where the mortar bombs had crumbled it. But the glasses showed me other things. Small figures stood in the embrasure or clung to the broken edges of the wall. I counted a score of them, and more. I thought I saw the bald head of the Bishop. I remembered his words in Blodwen’s apartment:

  “If killing there must be I would rather it were done by a warrior who kills with his own hand, and knows what bloody corpse he leaves behind.”

  While I watched they began singing. One of their dirge-like hymns; it sifted thinly down through the cold dawn air.

  “Give the order to fire whenever you choose,” Martin said. “But this time you will not be blind. This time you will see what it is you do.”

  • • •

  Men came from their tents, attracted by the singing. Cymru and Snake and Kluellan came to me, and the High Seers. They watched the singing Christians in the breach, and watched me also. Other figures appeared on top of the walls. They lined the parapets, in scores, in hundreds. There were not so many Christians in Winchester. These were the people of the city, human and dwarf and polymuf, offering their bodies as its bulwark.

  I said to Martin: “Go back to them. Tell them they can keep their freedom.”

  TEN

  THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS

  IN SLEEP LAST NIGHT I was in Winchester. I dreamed of an afternoon when Edmund and Martin and I cl
imbed Catherine’s Hill together, with the sun burning out of blue gulfs of sky and the clouds huge and white and slow-sailing. We had taken nets with us to catch butterflies, but all we saw were cabbage whites which were not worth taking. So we lay on the grass, under the shade of the trees which cover the hilltop, and talked idly as boys will talk on hot summer days: of dreams and hopes and nonsense. And when it was time to go home for tea we started down the hill, and Edmund cried: “Race you to the bottom!” and we began to run. Edmund and I left Martin behind and Edmund began to outdistance me also. So I ran faster and faster, taking giant strides, and then as the descent grew steeper I was skipping over the grass, unable to stop or check myself, until my feet left the ground altogether and I cartwheeled through the air, and the whole earth seemed to rise up and crash against me.

  All this was as it happened. I remembered lying on the ground, dazed, my head throbbing savagely with pain, and Edmund and Martin coming to pick me up. I remembered the concern in their faces and even the shirt Edmund was wearing, blue with a patch at the elbow.

  But there the dream changed. I was in bed and smarting from different wounds—the burns I got in my struggle with the Bayemot. And Blodwen stood by me, in her dress that was the color of beech leaves in winter. She took my bandaged hand and said: “You are a fool, Luke. But very brave . . .” She said: “There is to be a banquet where my father will give you a great honor. A prize. Do you want to know what prize it is, brave, foolish Luke?” She leaned forward, laughing, her golden hair falling almost to touch my face. “A prize . . . ,” she whispered.

  My heart was open and easy. In my dream I said what I had never been able to say in life:

  “I love you, Blodwen.”

  As I spoke the words she drifted from me. I called after her and she smiled and shook her head. I tried to rise and follow, but could not. Her figure faded in the distance, and I awoke and found my pillow wet with tears, and the high towers of Klan Gothlen framed in the window opposite my bed.